


The Extended Debrief

by februarystars



Series: The Widowmakers [2]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: F/M, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/februarystars/pseuds/februarystars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A follow-up standalone that tells the story of how a Soviet assassin came to be an agent of SHIELD</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Extended Debrief

_Natasha Romanoff_

The first week of her "extended debriefing" was a blur. She didn't see Barton. On occasion, she saw the woman with the angry face who'd arranged for her transport to the USA. Mostly, though, she was interviewed by an Agent Coulson.

He was a hard man to dislike. He was calm, knowledgable and didn't flinch when she got too near him. He also brought doughnuts with him most mornings and tried to make her life seem less of a prison sentence. He had kind eyes.

Her knowledge was mostly operational. She could shed no more light on the procedures behind the Red Rooms or other Black Widows than she had read for herself in the warehouse. She could describe the weapons she used and how she used them but couldn't tell them where they'd come from or who gave the orders that she followed.

She thought this would have angered a lesser man but Agent Coulson seemed to accept her information for what it was worth.

She spent a long weekend alone in her quarters. Saturday and Sunday she woke up feeling feverish and disoriented. She hated that moment of half-sleep before the clarity of fully waking. It was a moment of intense weakness and confusion. She was certain on more than one occasion that she had only just stopped screaming.

In between dreams of where she ran until her feet bled and dreams where she kept ripping out i.v. tubes that only tangled more and kept her tied to a hospital bed, she dreamt of him.

James.

On Friday she had lost her temper. Of all things, she'd lost it with Coulson's sympathetic face when, for the third time in a row, she'd had to answer that she didn't remember. She'd banged her fist on the table and made such a scene that she was embarrassed to think of it. In her bunk, she cringed at the thought of some of the things she'd yelled at him. She devoutly hoped he didn't speak fluent Russian but his face gave away that he'd understood at least a little. She had begun shouting questions at him and at the CCTV cameras and at the two guards with their nervous looks and assault rifles. She thought she may have been crying. She knew at least that she had shouted about her wasted memory and something esoteric about reality. She cringed again. What had finally stopped her rampage was his soft touch on her wrist and a quiet murmuring of her name. Of course he would be able to stop a storm with a whisper. That's probably why he was her handler.

He had stopped the questioning for the day and led her himself to her quarters. He'd merely nodded at the guards and escorted her out of the room, hand at her elbow. In the hallway he'd whispered through gritted teeth for her to keep quiet.

Once in her room, he'd sat next to her on her bed. The only outward sign that anything had gone wrong was a stiff gesture to straighten his cufflinks.

"I don't think your room is bugged," he'd said, "but as unlikely as it may seem, I have been wrong in the past so forgive me for whispering."

He put his face close to hers and looked right into her eyes. He wanted her to see the truth in his words, that his pupils did not dilate and that he did not flinch or look away.

"With the Black Widow Protocol, they could falsify a lot of things but they could never figure out how to fake a smell in memory. The sense of smell is too strongly associated with memories and as best we can tell, they were never able to force that bond. Anything that you can remember having a smell, you can almost guarantee is real."

In his normal voice he said, "just hang in there. I have something in the works but I won't know for sure until Monday. Just…" he broke off, seemingly unable to articulate what it was he wanted her to do.

"Don't talk to anyone about anything, okay?" he said and, more sharply, "I'll see you on Monday."

Her head felt full. Smell. James. She could so vividly recall his face, the tension in his back when he was trying to keep her at arm's length, all together so much more of him than her other old memories. He was real; he had to be real. She could remember the smell of his sweaty skin and the smell of his pillow after sleep. He had been real.

She held onto that and revelled in it. She'd gone for so long without thinking about him that it felt sore and painful, like stretching a bruised muscle. When he left her all those years ago, it was such a complete and absolute break that she just turned that part of herself off.

Now, he was the basis for everything that had ever been real in her past.

Monday came and she forced the nightmares to the back of her mind. She was sitting alert on her bed when Coulson came in at 7:00. He said nothing as he escorted her to their usual conference room.

There weren't any doughnuts.

He looked so serious and unfriendly that her heart sank. They must have found out something about her that made her unworthy. Untouchable. They were going to send her back. She stiffened her back and resolved to show no disappointment. She could make her own way and rebuild her past.

"Have a seat, Ms. Romanova," he said, gesturing to the only seat on her side of a very long desk.

Coulson carried a file around to the other side of the desk and looked over to the mirrored wall on his left. He made a throat slashing gesture and turned to face her. He hadn't much choice in the matter as she had a death-grip on his tie and was less than an inch from his face and crouched on the desk.

"Ah," he said, "I knew I should've brought the doughnuts." The corner of his mouth twitched and she loosened her grip by a degree.

"Please, Ms. Romanova, sit down or there will be much more paperwork involved than I care to think about."

She let go slowly and sat back down, frowning.

"I don't like when people do this," she said, making the throat cutting gesture, "in reference to me. It usually means there's going to be lots of bleeding."

She paused a second, thinking.

"And paperwork. Lots of paperwork. We have that in Russia, too."

"Apologies, Ms. Romanova. I was indicating that my colleagues should cut the CCTV and leave the viewing room. Which might be proved by the fact that none of them came swooping in here to rescue me," he said lightly.

"Sorry," she muttered.

"I need to ask you a few questions and I want you to answer as honestly as you can, do you understand?" he asked, straightening his wrinkled tie. She just nodded.

"How many guards do we have on you at any given moment?" he asked.

"Six, not counting yourself and whoever it is that walks around up there at night," she said, gesturing towards the ceiling.

"How many escape routes are there from your room?" he asked.

"Four and a half," she answered. He raised an eyebrow.

"Half?"

"It depends upon whether you want to survive the escape or not," she said, shrugging. He thought for a moment.

"Oh, clever. The pipes? But yes, the fall would probably kill you. Excellent work," he said.

"If you were going to try to turn one of our agents, who would it be and why?" he said, sounding suspiciously like a middle manager performing a very strange job interview.

"Agent Hill," she said and Coulson looked almost comically surprised.

"She doesn't like me. Strong emotions are a good foundation for exploiting weaknesses," she said, simply.

"You are scary," he said, with no small amount of wonder in his voice. He then stood up and indicated for her to stay where she was. He stepped through a door and came back with someone she recognized. Agent Nick Fury. She was sure he was on any number of kill lists and taking him down would have brought great personal glory. Secretly, she'd been glad never to have to face him. There were fearsome reputations and then there was Nick Fury.

She was impressed.

"So, Ms. Romonova, I see you know Director Fury. I guess it's a good time to mention that we aren't with the CIA," he said drily.

"You don't say," she said, her arms crossed over her chest in what Coulson would have described as a positively grumpy way were she not the Black Widow.

"I'm going to keep this short," Fury said, speaking for the first time. "We want you to come work for us."

"What?" Natalia looked at Coulson, searching for any hint of a joke or hoax. He looked utterly serious.

"What?" she said again, rather dumbfounded.

"You said she was smart, Coulson," Fury said, looking at the agent disapprovingly. Coulson just nodded.

"SHIELD?" she asked. No one said anything.

"But what about my intel and contacts? I thought SHIELD was more, well, proactive than the CIA? I thought I was an asset, not a potential agent," she said, her brain swiftly sorting through a mix of confusing and conflicting information.

Fury nodded at Coulson and they both sat at the desk. Coulson pulled out the file from earlier.

"We're of the opinion that you'd do much better in the field," Coulson said as he slid the folder towards her. She opened it and saw from her own bloody fingerprints that it contained the original documents from the warehouse. Not all of them, however, just ones that pertained to the Black Widow Protocol. There were chemical compounds, diagrams and photographs that she hadn't had time to take in. She looked up, questioningly.

"That is all of the information we have about the Red Room's methods," Fury said, tapping the file.

"No one outside of this room has any idea about what's in that file," Coulson continued. "The CIA seems to have a vague notion of some of it but they don't have enough information to be dangerous," he finished. Fury snorted. Clearly there was no love lost between the two agencies.

"We think that if they got ahold of you, they would be more interested in reverse engineering your programming," Coulson said. "We think you'd be rather more useful with your brain still inside your head instead of floating in formaldehyde somewhere under Dulles."

"Should you agree to work for us," Fury took over, "you get to keep that file and we tell them what they suspect already; namely that we picked up an old spook in Siberia who hasn't got anything new to sell."

"And if I refuse?" Natalia asked warily.

"If you refuse, you leave. We keep the file to destroy and you go about your merry way. Most ex-Soviet defections are flagged for the CIA so you'll probably end up going through this whole mess again with them. But it would be up to you to keep them from trying to get inside your memories through a hole in your head," Fury said.

"What's in it for you?" she asked, still unsure of what to trust. Fight or flight.

"Have you seen your resume?" Coulson asked, incredulous.

"I think she wants to know why we would trust her as an agent, Coulson," Fury said.

"Trust is a powerful thing, Ms. Romanova. Coulson trusts Barton's instincts enough to take you in. I trust his judgment when he tells me that if given the chance to prove yourself, you won't go nuts and take down half a battalion in a blaze of glory. I give you the file and keep your secrets, you kind of have to trust me. It's a good system."

She waited a second before answering, the fierce torrent of memories both false and real that had been undone by one man in Siberia threatening to overwhelm her. She closed her eyes and thought of James. His rough hand in hers in front of a flickering and smoky fire. She could almost smell it. His deep laugh and whispered promise that someday they would get out of the life. They would listen to their better angels, he'd said. They would be free.

Her eyes snapped open and she said, "I accept."

"Excellent," said Fury and he stood up, hand held out for her to shake. "Welcome to SHIELD. I have other places to be but Coulson can get you up to speed on your new partner."

With that, he left a rather stunned Natalia with a grinning Agent Coulson.

"Agent--" she started to say but was cut off.

"Call me Phil," he said, still smiling. She frowned.

"Let's go with Coulson," he said.

"Coulson," she said, "I need a few things."

"Okay," he said cautiously.

"I will need money and credit and a flat. An apartment, I mean. Like on Friends. Three bedrooms. I need to own it. And I want a new name," she said, tumbling through the hurried words.

Coulson looked thoughtful. "Doable," he said, finally.

"What name?" he asked and wondered if he was going to have to get papers for a Svetlana Eastwood-Indiana-Jones or something similar. He'd had to do much worse.

"Call me Natasha. Natasha Romanoff," she said and there was a sad finality to the words.

"Natasha, before I bring Barton in, I want you to know something. You were a high-priority take. He was sent there to kill you on the strictest orders. He took a chance on you," Coulson said.

"I know--" Natasha started to interrupt but was stopped with a gesture from Coulson.

"You know some things. What you don't know is that he put more than just a suspension on the line. He put his whole career and his freedom on the line for you. He's not the type to ever mention it so I wanted you to know. To appreciate him," Coulson said, an unusually serious expression in his eyes.

"I assure you," Natasha said, fighting some emotions she couldn't name, "I understand the kind of man he must be. I knew one like him, once. He would have made the same call, I think."

"Good," said Coulson. Then he shouted for Barton to come through and his shadow filled the doorway. Natasha thought he might be nervous or wary of her and fought down some irritation. He came in the room and she broke into a wide smile. The pattern of his steps had given him away.

"You're the one who guarded from above!" she said, her smile brilliant. She'd felt a sort of kinship with him as he paced the ceiling above her during long nights. For his part, Clint Barton was at a loss for words. Bloodied, bruised, barefoot and weeping, she'd been something of a mess. Now, clean and simply dressed with her long red hair in a ponytail, she was smiling up at him in such a way that made his heart fail. She was stunning. He felt concussed.

He shook his head a little and held out a hand.

"Barton," he said, by way of reintroduction.

She, still smiling warmly, held out hers in return. "Natasha."

Agent Coulson nodded at them and looked for all the world like a very proud parent.


End file.
